On Being Better

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine dropped a “terrible truth bomb” (her words, not mine) in to her Facebook status. Essentially, it said this: “there’s always somebody better than you at everything you like about yourself.”

Now, I don’t have the context for this particular statement. She could have been frustrated at herself, at someone else, or just plain envious of someone who had skills that she coveted. (She, for the record, is awesome.) Therefore, I cannot comment on the why of this statement. Given that, reading that status sans context sent my brain on a pretty crazy bender, and I am here to outline precisely what went through my head because, well, I think it’s interesting.

Your mileage may vary.

The statement’s accuracy is really not up for argument, because, well, it’s essentially true. There’s always someone better than you at the things in which you take pride. What “better” actually means is left to the individual to define. What is up for discussion, however, is what you do with that fact.

On a first read, the statement is depressing as hell and actually quite discouraging. My initial reaction was, shit, she’s right, aw maaaaaaaaaaaaaan. I am a person who is aware of her strengths and her skills and the limitations of both, but if I’ve worked hard to be happy at, say, writing, the knowledge that it’s still a piece of garbage when matched up against those superior to me is incredibly soul-crushing. I could say the same about pretty much anything, but the basic idea here is that if you busted your ass to be good at something, knowing that someone is always better does bring some sense of inadequacy and futility to the vast majority of humanity.

There are three ways to go from here, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive; one may be a stepping-stone toward the other and which one you go with really just depends on your attitude and personality… as well as what that “something” actually is.

The first and most obvious is admitting defeat. There are many people who either set out to be good at something or who stumble into realizing that they have some talent in a specific field. Once they discover that there are many others who are far better than them in that particular area, plenty of people throw in the towel and abandon it. Usually this is something that the person doesn’t actually care about and was only really exploring because they thought they were good at it. Now, that’s not a criticism, it’s recognition of the human condition; we like the things we are good at (but those things are not all the things we like). Totally normal. And why wouldn’t you walk away from something you don’t enjoy if it means you have more time to explore something you do? I’ve done it on plenty of occasions, most notably playing the piano and swimming.

Oh yeah, I swam competitively up to the age of 14 but stopped enjoying it the instant my record at the Singapore Island Country Club was slammed ruthlessly into a wall by some girl I had never even heard of. I was 12 at the time, I believe. I liked swimming when I was winning, but the second someone else came along and beat me (soundly and effortlessly, by a full 2 seconds), I stopped caring.

The second approach is to accept your status by making excuses for your inferiority in that particular area. That sounds super harsh, but I’m not being nasty. Basically, you continue as you are, at the level of understanding that you have, with your motivation being “I’m not ever going to be the best at this so there’s no hurry to be better.” The excuses vary, but they are mostly along the lines of “this isn’t my speciality; I’m just checking it out.” You hover in between novice and intermediate levels of understanding and you’re generally okay with that, only really working to be better when it suits you. This is me and everything to do with website design. I know enough about it to dabble, but I am nowhere near the league of everyone who does it for a living. It is also the case for most people, where you generally “ignore” the fact that there are people consistently better than you at what you like about yourself, be it a trade skill or the way you wear that kind of dress.

The third approach is to use that harsh truth as motivation, and this is the crux of this blog post. The acknowledgement of your lack of understanding can be empowering. How so? You can look at this competitively or pragmatically. A competitor will say that “I want to be the best, and that person is better than me so I will work to be better than that person.” You’re the underdog in every sports film ever made and you want to make this into a Cinderella story, where you battle opponents better and faster than you because it makes you better even if you lose… and your end goal is that, eventually, you will no longer loser, you will be better, and you will start winning. In this case, the people better than you are hurdles to overcome on your path to be the best.

A more adaptive type of competitor could also look at the area in question and look at how else they can be good at it that puts them out of competition with others. No one is truly the best in all aspects of any field, whether it’s a sport, a technical skill, or even how physically attractive you are. Therefore, the adaptive person ignores certain aspects and focuses on those that play to their other strengths or even have the fewest people above them on the ladder. It’s a competitive personality in that they want to be the best, but they adjust their view on what the “best” means.

A more pragmatic individual will look at the situation as such: “I am proud that I am good at this, but I can be better and I know I can be better because that guy over there is already better.” Essentially, you use the people higher up on the skill ladder as benchmarks. Because someone has reached that level, they have effectively proven that reaching that level is possible. You either model yourself after that person to follow their path to reach their level or you formulate your own strategy to reach their level. Either way, the idea here isn’t to beat the people better than you, but to learn from them and be like them. They are the goal rather than the hurdle.

Neither the competitive nor pragmatic approach is better than the other. As mentioned earlier, it usually comes down to the skill, area, or aspect of yourself that you like. Some things may be easier to look at from a pragmatic view, while others encourage a competitive view.

Basically, there is no right or wrong way to look at this sort of thing. No one really gets to dictate how you should handle your spot on the various ladders on which you find yourself, because they don’t have your personality and they don’t look at that particular skill or area the same way you do. That said, I would argue that going 100% into a single approach on everything is perhaps unhealthy, because you stop caring about anything at all or you get so competitive that you keep beating yourself up over everything in your life or the things that you liked about yourself have become things you now dislike. A mix is perhaps healthiest, where your motivation drives you toward the skills or aspects you want to improve the most, you accept your current “ranking” in other areas, and you abandon those that are really just taking time away from you bettering those priority skills or aspects.

Generally speaking, though, my personal motto in moments where I feel like I’m just not good enough is: “Be the best you can be… then be better.”

How do you deal with those moments of inadequacy? How do you battle the onset of defeat?